2. Case studies illustrating how historical projects have used various digital research techniques.

3. A tools audit, listing some of the most common digital tools for historical research (most of which are free).

The courses are the most substantial part of the project, and we hope that they give historians a solid basis for going further with semantic markup and text mining if they think these approaches would be useful to their research.

We originally promised five case studies and we have published four. That is because our favourite historical visualisation site, Mapping the Republic of Letters, is currently being revamped. We will put up a case study on this site as soon as the new version is finished.

Finally, the tools audit is by no means comprehensive. We never intended it to be, and too many tools may make the audit less useful, but if there is a tool that you think we really should have included then let us know (either in the comments below or using the webform for the audit) and we’ll certainly look into it.

The third and final set of notes from the HISTORE workshop comes from Group 3. This group was chaired by Jonathan Blaney, who is managing the HISTORE project but is primarily employed on the British History Online website, Connected Histories, and other IHR digital projects.

Group 3 breakout (chaired by Jonathan Blaney)

lack of joined-up thinking

no support from faculty

no support generally

collaboration between disciplines

not even the initial knowledge – no demand therefore

funding pressures mean you’re afraid to experiment

not even Zotero! the initial costs are too high, even if it might be more efficient in the end

add them to skills workshops – show that your PhD is the complete package

lots of independent historians are interested or would be if they knew

seeing the relevance is the key

case studies are important

big showcase projects may be offputting

practical, small-scale examples

texts not necessarily freely available

need guidance on copyright – people know about traditional copyright but not digital copyright

Twitter!

Google Hangouts

need to enthuse people – virally

rating/guidance

people in academia should be used to the intellectual challenge of learning tools

we don’t see the failures

citation – rules not up to date

how-to-cite boxes are great

the desire for “everything” to be freely available, particularly for interested people without institutional affiliation

bringing data together in a bucket, so digital tools can be used on it once, rather than iteratively

encouraging a habit of recording search methods (data, databases, search terms, date of access) so searches/queries can be replicated

The second set of notes from the HISTORE workshop comes from Group 2. This group was chaired by Mark Merry, who is responsible for several IHR digital projects and is a key training officer for our research training courses.

Group 2 (chaired by Mark Merry)

Training in digital tools in the humanities needs to begin earlier in students’ lives – even at undergrad level – they should be viewed as fundamental research skills and given as much weight as non-digital skills tuition

That is, tuition should be about logic and engagement and transferable methodologies, and about taxonomies and topic modelling

There is a need to teach concepts, broad approaches and the ‘theory’ of digital tool usage as the tools themselves become obsolete too quickly for the training to be about the specifics of any one tool – we should be striving to inspire people to train themselves as much as ‘showing them how to do it’

There needs to be more training to raise awareness about the existence of appropriate tools and toolkits

Online training should be privileged ahead of face to face – for simple convenience and to reach researchers without institutional affiliation

Academics could learn from the tools available to ‘amateur’ researchers as well as their proficiency with the techniques and approaches involved

Training should comprise demonstration not lecturing – both in terms of the goal of the training (i.e. to show what is possible) and in terms of the medium of the training resource (screencasting etc.)

The first set of notes from the HISTORE workshop comes from Group 1. This group was chaired by Matt Phillpott, project officer for the History SPOT platform on which the modules will eventually be located.

1.2 Discovery of internet resources – hard to find what is out there. Some kind of central index needed? The Arts-Humanities.net site does try and do this http://www.arts-humanities.net/ but is itself often overlooked.

2. Digital Tools – experiences good and bad

2.1 Old Bailey Online and related resources explain the use of digital tools well but not many other projects do this.

3.3 Online training is useful but face-to-face discussion and training can also go a long way to improving knowledge.

4. Do you want to start a project and learn as you go, flying blind, or would you prefer to be in command of the technical requirements before you start?

4.1 The group agreed that a large part of training is on the go. It would be pointless learning a skill and then finding that it won’t work for the project. At the same time there was concern that it is not easy to find out what tools are out there and might be useful.

5. What are the impediments to digital research for you?

5.1 Training and expertise are lacking within the History discipline. This means that UG students do not get the training unless they are fortunate to have a lecturer who understands the technology.

5.2 There is a presumption that the young know what to do with technology, which is only true as far as it goes. There is a lot that needs to be taught which isn’t.

5.3 REF is a large impediment as it does not recognise or reward extensive work done using digital tools. Only focused on more traditional outputs such as monographs and articles. Why spend so much time learning and using a digital tool, when traditional methods are rewarded more favourably?

Our recent workshop on digital tools for historians has given us plenty of food for thought. Do historians want training in digital tools? The answer seemed to be yes (although admittedly we might have been talking with the already converted).

Do historians have time or incentive to undertake training in digital tools? Ah! Now we have a problem. The overwhelming response during our breakout sessions was that there was little incentive or guidance within the profession in regard to digital tools. Indeed, newly off the press a British Library study funded by JISC has confirmed that Generation Y at least (that is, those born between 1982 and 1994) are not as ready to use complex digital tools as is often assumed. The report Researchers of Tomorrow: The research behaviour of Generation Y doctoral students (2012) suggests more tailor made training is required, although it also agrees that there remains a reluctance to undertake such training unless it is already recognised as essential to students current researches.

A further problem presents itself on this subject that was touched upon in our breakout sessions; there is a lack of basic knowledge about what tools there are to achieve research tasks. There is no advice as to how easy or difficult those tools are to use (including how much time and cost it will take to learn). Neither is there much advice on how tools can be adapted and used in historical research in general.

These are all serious impediments that historian will need to address, as digital tools can offer exciting new opportunities to learn things from our textual heritage. Group 2 from our breakout sessions, for example, argued for digital tools training to be included within undergraduate tuition. This, they argued, should be viewed as fundamental research skills and be given as much weight as non-digital skills tuition. Group 3 suggested adding digital tools training to skills workshops as a means of adding to the PhD ‘package’.

What was interesting, that came out of all three groups, however, was a feeling that such dedicated training is not generally where they, themselves go to learn these skills, nor something that they want to necessarily go through to achieve their initial aims. They liked to dip into a subject to learn what they need, and then if it is useful enough consider a full face-to-face or online course. Group 1 emphasised that if they need to learn something about a digital tool they will generally Google it and find the information on forums, blogs, and wikis. Indeed, many participants had used free training materials found through these methods.

Nevertheless, such searching relies upon the fundamental need to know what tools exist in the first place and which are useful to research. Group 1 discussed the need for a central location where such information could be found by historians. It was pointed out that the Arts-Humanities.net provides such a service. It was interesting that few in the group were aware of this.

In all, it would appear from the discussion in our breakout groups, that historians want more easily available information on what tools there are and how these might be applicable to their own research. They want to be able to find out a little bit about these tools quickly, and, where possible, gain a basic knowledge of how they work and what can be done with them, before considering spending their time on a training course. What type of training course was, however, not quite made clear. Do historians want face to face training on specific tools or techniques? Or would they prefer online courses? Perhaps a mixture of both?

From these discussions it would appear that our approach with the two HISTORE modules (one on semantic data and another on text mining) was the right one. We are creating two relatively short freely available modules that introduce each subject and which suggest what historians can potentially gain from using such tools. The modules are broken down into sections which work through the process from the basic to the more complex (although they are not intended to give everything you would want to know about the tools). These then, are introductions. The first section of each course will introduce you to the tool and can be read within 30 minutes (probably more like 10 if you don’t do the exercises). From there you can go further if you would like to gain a basic grasp of the tool. In some cases that might well be enough for what you need. At the very least the modules should enable you to judge for yourself whether more training and time should be spent learning about the tool.

Over the course of the next week we shall post brief bullet point notes from each of the breakout sessions, so you can see a little more of what was said. Soon after this, we will also post the audio and hopefully video from the presentations given at the workshop. By the end of August we hope to have the modules ready for release and so we will be talking a little more about these very soon!

The Histore workshop took place last Thursday. Thanks to everyone who came and made it an engaging and thought-provoking afternoon; the breakout session generated all kinds of ideas for the IHR Digital team,and we hope that they were equally useful for other participants. We’d especially like to thank our external speakers, Matteo Romanello and Pip Willcox, who came to give talks on text mining and semantic markup.

You can find pdfs of the presentations below. Histore introduction1 and Histore introduction2 are the slides from talks by me and Matt Phillpott about the project. Pip’s talk is called new tools for old books and Matteo’s is introduction to text mining.

We’re planning to add more materials from the workshop over the next couple of weeks. We’ll post the summaries of the breakout session (which we hope might generate further discussion), links to the audio files of the talks and, finally, links to the videos.